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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: "The way we think about charity is dead wrong"
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Byron:
Every red cent a charity exec pockets is taken from the charity's goal.
I think we had the same discussion about church employees recently, and to my mind, the workman is still worthy of his hire.
If the charity requires high-six-figures execs to manage its operations, it should hire them. It should, however, ensure that such an exec is actually necessary. If you are a charity and you find yourself spending a significant portion of your income on management staff, you're probably doing it wrong.
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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Byron
Shipmate
# 15532
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
[...] If the charity requires high-six-figures execs to manage its operations, it should hire them. It should, however, ensure that such an exec is actually necessary. [...]
World of yes.
A good way to do this would be to raise the exec's salary directly. If they're really that good, they ought to be able to persuade the charity's supporters to bankroll them, and explain directly why they deserve the $250,000 or whatever it is they think they're worth.
That campaign I'd like to see! ![[Devil]](graemlins/devil.gif)
Posts: 1112 | Registered: Mar 2010
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Byron:
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
[...] If the charity requires high-six-figures execs to manage its operations, it should hire them. It should, however, ensure that such an exec is actually necessary. [...]
World of yes.
A good way to do this would be to raise the exec's salary directly. If they're really that good, they ought to be able to persuade the charity's supporters to bankroll them, and explain directly why they deserve the $250,000 or whatever it is they think they're worth.
That campaign I'd like to see!
I wish we were only talking about $250,000.
![[Disappointed]](graemlins/disappointed.gif)
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Byron:
Sure, but we're talking six-figure exec pay, not subsistence wages. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Where the hell do you live?
If you want to buy a two-bedroom condo in my barely middle-class neighborhood, you need to make over $100,000. Not a house, mind you -- just a condo. Surely an organization's executive should be able to afford to buy a home, raise children, and save for retirement. Maybe even the other program staff and the support staff should be paid enough to do the same things. Just maybe these people need to make enough money so they don't end up in line for the same charities you think they should serve solely for the wish to do good. ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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Beeswax Altar
Shipmate
# 11644
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Because importing those corporate models of leadership into church leadership the last few decades has worked out so well, right? (shudder)
![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif)
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Losing sleep is something you want to avoid, if possible.
-Og: King of Bashan
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Byron
Shipmate
# 15532
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
quote:
Originally posted by Byron:
Sure, but we're talking six-figure exec pay, not subsistence wages.
Where the hell do you live?
If you want to buy a two-bedroom condo in my barely middle-class neighborhood, you need to make over $100,000. Not a house, mind you -- just a condo. Surely an organization's executive should be able to afford to buy a home, raise children, and save for retirement. Maybe even the other program staff and the support staff should be paid enough to do the same things. Just maybe these people need to make enough money so they don't end up in line for the same charities you think they should serve solely for the wish to do good.
I'm not talking a bare hundred: we're in the era of the million dollar nonprofit CEO.
Average haul for a CEO of a large nonprofit? A cool $429,512. That's more than the president gets; near double what a Supreme Court justice pulls in.
Them's big bucks by any measure. If the execs' skills are truly worth it, it may be justified, but where should it stop? Any upper limit?
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Dave W.
Shipmate
# 8765
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Byron:
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
But why should we ask this of them? They can't just want to do good, they have to take oath of - well, not poverty, but of never making more than, say, an associate professor of accounting? Just how little should they be allowed to earn? And should everyone working for a charity get paid less than they could get elsewhere?
Every red cent a charity exec pockets is taken from the charity's goal. It doesn't even stop at six-figure salaries: most hospitals are non-profit, yet members of the board can rake in million dollar salaries while patients are beggared and bankrupted by medical bills.
Do I think charities are a vocation? Yes. Do I think a vocation's compatible with driving around in a new Lexus? Sure, if it's not at the cost of the folk you're supposed to be helping. Am I pragmatic enough to accept the world doesn't work that way? Sure, but doesn't mean I have to like it, or stop trying to nudge it a bit in the right direction.
Now that you've answered the questions you've asked yourself, would you care to take a stab at the questions I asked you?
How little should they be allowed to earn? And should everyone working for a charity get paid less than they could get elsewhere?
For my part - after some reflection, I think the overhead ratio maybe isn't such a bad metric after all. Running a large organization can be a difficult job and I wouldn't necessarily begrudge the executives their pay - but contra Dan Pallotta, it seems to me that operating on a large scale means they should be able to achieve lower overhead ratios.
Posts: 2059 | From: the hub of the solar system | Registered: Nov 2004
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Byron
Shipmate
# 15532
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Posted
Dave W., I didn't give an exact amount 'cause it'd be arbitrary, and with inflation, soon meaningless.
As a baseline, a charity exec ought to earn a reasonable wage to give a comfortable standard of living, reasonable depending on all the circumstances, including property where they live, school costs, etc. If they're truly gifted, and bring millions into the organization, a higher wage may be justified.
That's what it comes down to for me: are they worth every penny they get paid, or could the money be better spent elsewhere to further the charity's goals?
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Byron:
I'm not talking a bare hundred: we're in the era of the million dollar nonprofit CEO.
Average haul for a CEO of a large nonprofit? A cool $429,512. That's more than the president gets; near double what a Supreme Court justice pulls in.
Sure, that's the average for a large non-profit. Most non-profits are small. From your link:
quote:
In a Charity Navigator study, only six out of the 3,786 nonprofits studied paid their highest executives more than $1 million and 65 received between $500,000 and $1 million.
The average compensation for the CEO of a non-profit, according to Charity Navigator, is $150,000. But they don't look at charities with revenues of less than $1,000,000, so they're leaving out a lot of small charities.
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Byron:
As a baseline, a charity exec ought to earn a reasonable wage to give a comfortable standard of living, reasonable depending on all the circumstances, including property where they live, school costs, etc.
Are executives the only charity employees who ought to earn enough for a reasonable living?
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Dave W.
Shipmate
# 8765
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Byron:
Dave W., I didn't give an exact amount 'cause it'd be arbitrary, and with inflation, soon meaningless.
What, between the time you write it and the time I read it, inflation will render it meaningless? Holy Weimar Republic, Batman - I better get my wheelbarrow! (Also - your admission of arbitrariness over pay contrasts oddly with your certainty about what kind of cars they should be driving.) quote:
As a baseline, a charity exec ought to earn a reasonable wage to give a comfortable standard of living, reasonable depending on all the circumstances, including property where they live, school costs, etc.
If "comfortable" is what the executives are allowed, what about all the other employees - would "barely adequate" do? Do they also take proportionally less than what they could make elsewhere? (Remember - every red cent that goes in their pockets is donation money that isn't going to the homeless!) quote:
If they're truly gifted, and bring millions into the organization, a higher wage may be justified.
That's what it comes down to for me: are they worth every penny they get paid, or could the money be better spent elsewhere to further the charity's goals?
That sounds reasonable - but I imagine the charity's board probably already thought of that. It's not clear to me what additional information a $25 donor can muster to improve on their decision (aside from things like lengthy condemnatory articles by ProPublica, I suppose.)
Posts: 2059 | From: the hub of the solar system | Registered: Nov 2004
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Lucia
Looking for light
# 15201
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Posted
I think one of the difficulties with this discussion is that it covers a huge variety of different types of organisation, both in size and the way they organise their operations.
Mr Lucia and I work with a small development association in North Africa. It is a non-profit organisation and the majority of staff come from a variety countries and are not paid by the organisation but raise funds for their own support in their country of origin to enable them to work here. (I can assure you that this is not a route to getting rich...).
But our constant headache is getting donors to recognise the need for funding for the overhead costs of the organisation. To run projects effectively we have regional offices around the country and our staff need transport to get to projects. Most of our vehicles are old and needing constant maintenance but there is huge reluctance from donors for money to go towards these kinds of costs. They want all their money to go directly to help people in the projects. But actually organisations do need some infrastructure in place to be able to run effectively but it's not very glamorous or exciting to give to that. You have to have the imagination to see the links in the chain to see what you are enabling to happen by supporting the organisation's structure and administration. Certainly there is a place for making sure that this is not being wasteful, but our experience is that the problem for small organisations is in the opposite direction. Everyone wants their money to go to the frontline.
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
Now that you've answered the questions you've asked yourself, would you care to take a stab at the questions I asked you?
How little should they be allowed to earn? And should everyone working for a charity get paid less than they could get elsewhere?
For my part - after some reflection, I think the overhead ratio maybe isn't such a bad metric after all. Running a large organization can be a difficult job and I wouldn't necessarily begrudge the executives their pay - but contra Dan Pallotta, it seems to me that operating on a large scale means they should be able to achieve lower overhead ratios.
Yes.
The unspoken problem inherent in this discussion is that it's predicated on a faulty assumption-- that the corporate model of obscenely overpaid CEO's exploiting massively underpaid workers is a good one and that it yields good results. I gotta give those CEO's one thing: they sure know how to market themselves, because this lie seems so prevalent that they can even now spin it out in other fields-- the church, NGO's, etc. The whole premise of the article just assumes that truth w/o really examining if it is so. But the reality is, the financial crash not too long ago demonstrated that is just a load of BS. It's not working in the financial sector, it's not working anywhere in the business world. So there's simply no reason to assume it would work with NGOs.
I have no problem with the notion that people working for non-profits ought to make a reasonable wage, and that the people with the most responsibility/specialized skills or training should be paid proportionally more than those with less. What I don't buy is the notion that this metric should be something like 20x or more the bottom tier workers. Not because NGOs are somehow different than corporations-- but because it's not working well for anyone but the CEOs in the corporate sector.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
quote:
Originally posted by Byron:
I'm not talking a bare hundred: we're in the era of the million dollar nonprofit CEO.
Average haul for a CEO of a large nonprofit? A cool $429,512. That's more than the president gets; near double what a Supreme Court justice pulls in.
Sure, that's the average for a large non-profit. Most non-profits are small.
Meaning then that there are some non-profits that are paying far, far more than $429K. Which, as has been noted above-- goes to the point first of all that a non-profit can be run well on far by CEOs making far less than $429K, and the notion that the question of the OP is a good one. There are great NGO's run prudently that use their resources well-- and NGOs that are not. It's important for donors to know the difference.
fyi: Most of the non-profit CEOs making the million dollar salaries are in the medical field, btw. Time did an exhaustive analysis of medical costs in the US-- very instructive for a lot of reasons, but a side note was the info. that the highest paid person in almost every city in America (with a few exceptions in the financial centers) was the CEO of the local non-profit hospital. And that "non-profit" hospitals are really not "charities" in the way most of us think of them. That the big fund-raiser galas with pictures of adorable sick children are all just a PR campaign-- because the big money isn't coming from those fund-raisers, it's coming from exactly the same place as any other cold-hearted corporate enterprise-- jacked up bills. The whole "non-profit" scheme is a clever legal fiction that helps with some tax issues but more importantly gives the public a nice, warm feeling towards an enterprise that is bleeding poor and middle-class Americans dry when they are at their most vulnerable. Bottom line: when it comes to charitable giving in the medical field-- look closely.
[ 09. December 2014, 13:46: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Raptor Eye
Shipmate
# 16649
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Posted
I can see the difficulty with that Lucia, but the reason for donation is the cause. The overheads need to be included in the cost of provision, so that it is acceptable to say that it costs eg £30 to feed a family, when in fact the food they have been given cost only £10 and the rest was overheads of one kind or another.
However, to throw my two penneth into the comments of other posts above, it is not acceptable imv for anyone who works for a charity to be paid excessively, nor underpaid if that means that they don't have the basics to live on. Unless the heart and soul is in the provision of the cause, I don't think that they should work for the company, however good their cv looks.
cross-posted with cliffdweller
[ 09. December 2014, 13:49: Message edited by: Raptor Eye ]
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Be still, and know that I am God! Psalm 46.10
Posts: 4359 | From: The United Kingdom | Registered: Sep 2011
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Byron
Shipmate
# 15532
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Posted
cliffdweller knocks it out the park! This corporate greed under the guise of charity is exactly what I'm talking about. Funds raised with cute kids used to line the pockets of the bossmen. Such behavior would shame a railroad baron.
I know, RuthW, that there are many fine nonprofits. Your post just illustrates that it doesn't have to be how cliffdweller describes. I'm not sure, Dave W., why you disagree that every red cent raised to help X cause should, if at all possible, go towards its intended goal (if you do). How about my suggestion that wages be raised separately and openly?
Dafyd, you make my point for me. Of course all employees should make a decent wage. In an organization with finite resources, that means the execs should be willing to tighten their belts a little. If they don't, the folk who pay can be the very people they're supposed to help, like the families ruined by "nonprofit" hospitals robbing their patients blind and operating like a cartel.
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Byron:
How about my suggestion that wages be raised separately and openly?
I think Lucia points out the problem with this. Everyone wants to give money to help the starving kiddies. Nobody wants to pay for logistics management, and even fewer people want to donate their hard-earned cash to pay the auditors.
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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Byron
Shipmate
# 15532
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
quote:
Originally posted by Byron:
How about my suggestion that wages be raised separately and openly?
I think Lucia points out the problem with this. Everyone wants to give money to help the starving kiddies. Nobody wants to pay for logistics management, and even fewer people want to donate their hard-earned cash to pay the auditors.
Obviously, so in effect, in too many cases, money's being raised on false pretenses?
As my link noted, some states have suggested a salary cap for nonprofit execs. Instead, how about a rule that money raised for X purpose must be spent directly on that purpose, and money raised for wages and overheads be done so honestly?
If these six/seven figure salaries are justified, surely they can be sold to folk who donate? If they can't be sold, doesn't that indicate a serious issue with justification?
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Gwai
Shipmate
# 11076
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Posted
Or perhaps rather it suggests that people who donate have no idea what it does not cost to fund charity. Some people think all overhead is horrible and don't want to fund anyone's salaries even though they want their brilliant cause to be supported by salaried people. (And yes the opposite happens too.) Until people all become wise charities will have to find ways to cover costs. And for myself, if there is a charity that reads with children, I think it completely fair if a (proportional) piece of each donation goes to say pay gas to take the books and readers to the children. And if Jane and Joe Schmo gives to the charity but haven't realized it will need to deal with transportation costs, that doesn't make the charity mendacious if it spends a bit of their donation on such costs.
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A master of men was the Goodly Fere,
A mate of the wind and sea.
If they think they ha’ slain our Goodly Fere
They are fools eternally.
Posts: 11914 | From: Chicago | Registered: Feb 2006
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itsarumdo
Shipmate
# 18174
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
quote:
Originally posted by Byron:
I'm not talking a bare hundred: we're in the era of the million dollar nonprofit CEO.
Average haul for a CEO of a large nonprofit? A cool $429,512. That's more than the president gets; near double what a Supreme Court justice pulls in.
Sure, that's the average for a large non-profit. Most non-profits are small.
Meaning then that there are some non-profits that are paying far, far more than $429K. Which, as has been noted above-- goes to the point first of all that a non-profit can be run well on far by CEOs making far less than $429K, and the notion that the question of the OP is a good one. There are great NGO's run prudently that use their resources well-- and NGOs that are not. It's important for donors to know the difference.
fyi: Most of the non-profit CEOs making the million dollar salaries are in the medical field, btw. Time did an exhaustive analysis of medical costs in the US-- very instructive for a lot of reasons, but a side note was the info. that the highest paid person in almost every city in America (with a few exceptions in the financial centers) was the CEO of the local non-profit hospital. And that "non-profit" hospitals are really not "charities" in the way most of us think of them. That the big fund-raiser galas with pictures of adorable sick children are all just a PR campaign-- because the big money isn't coming from those fund-raisers, it's coming from exactly the same place as any other cold-hearted corporate enterprise-- jacked up bills. The whole "non-profit" scheme is a clever legal fiction that helps with some tax issues but more importantly gives the public a nice, warm feeling towards an enterprise that is bleeding poor and middle-class Americans dry when they are at their most vulnerable. Bottom line: when it comes to charitable giving in the medical field-- look closely.
Yes - well I stopped giving to medical charities when I realised a fair proportion of them essentially operate as PR fronts and lobby organisations for big pharma companies. And since there are so many other things that need some kind of help, I'm not up for wading through the labarynthine information with a sufficiently sharp toothpick to identify the few independents.
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
Posts: 994 | From: Planet Zog | Registered: Jul 2014
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gwai:
Or perhaps rather it suggests that people who donate have no idea what it does not cost to fund charity. Some people think all overhead is horrible and don't want to fund anyone's salaries even though they want their brilliant cause to be supported by salaried people. (And yes the opposite happens too.) Until people all become wise charities will have to find ways to cover costs. And for myself, if there is a charity that reads with children, I think it completely fair if a (proportional) piece of each donation goes to say pay gas to take the books and readers to the children. And if Jane and Joe Schmo gives to the charity but haven't realized it will need to deal with transportation costs, that doesn't make the charity mendacious if it spends a bit of their donation on such costs.
Yes, I agree. It's even appropriate to pay for some staff members to put together the schedule so you don't have 5 volunteers show up the day of a teacher inservice, or handle donations properly so that you get your tax write off. It's even appropriate to pay someone to do some nice flyers and letters to raise funds.
And yes, people don't give to those sorts of indirect expenses, even though they are as essential to the ministry of the organization as the more direct things (e.g. books). So I'm fine with a "cut" going to administration and/or fund-raising. I'm fine with good people making a good wage. I simply expect that efforts be taken to keep administrative and fund-raising costs down, and that there be transparent record-keeping so any donor can see where their money is going.
There are a LOT of charities where this is the case-- lots of good, worthwhile NGOs that are doing great work on a shoestring. But sadly there are others (again, most notably but not restricted to, medical charities) where this is very much NOT the case. So I too am selective in where I give.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Dave W.
Shipmate
# 8765
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Byron:
I'm not sure, Dave W., why you disagree that every red cent raised to help X cause should, if at all possible, go towards its intended goal (if you do).
Because saying that money spent on payroll isn't going towards the intended goal doesn't make any sense to me, and I think it's unreasonable to insist that people who work for charities be paid poorly. quote:
How about my suggestion that wages be raised separately and openly?
I think publishing pay rates, at least by general categories, might make sense for large charities. But trying to raise money for pay separately seems bizarre, largely for the reasons Gwai brought up. There's no reason to expect that the preferences of random donors are likely to lead to sensible budget allocations.
Posts: 2059 | From: the hub of the solar system | Registered: Nov 2004
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M.
Ship's Spare Part
# 3291
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Posted
That's why I like the model I mentioned upthread: that you join the charity as a member - the membership fee covers overheads and donations on top go straight and entirely to the charitable cause.
As I also posted, this is a small charity and I don't know if it would scale up.
M.
Posts: 2303 | From: Lurking in Surrey | Registered: Sep 2002
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Charity begins at home.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Mudfrog
Shipmate
# 8116
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
I question the whole notion of charity - is is plastering over cracks when, instead, we need to get to the root causes of those cracks - that requires political action.
Yes, instead of giving someone food from a foodbank because they've been sanctioned, fight against the sanction and get the bloke his money!
Why should charities do the government's work for it?
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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 8237 | From: North Yorkshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2004
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Mudfrog
Shipmate
# 8116
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Charity begins at home.
I hope that in using this phrase you mean that learning to be charitable starts with one's upbringing, and not that we should only be concerned to look after our own people.
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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 8237 | From: North Yorkshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2004
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
My home is in a street across from a church. I had to turn "Eugene" away once this morning, but I've invited him back for lunch.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
I question the whole notion of charity - is is plastering over cracks when, instead, we need to get to the root causes of those cracks - that requires political action.
Yes, instead of giving someone food from a foodbank because they've been sanctioned, fight against the sanction and get the bloke his money!
Why should charities do the government's work for it?
For much the same reason that the government tops up wages, with benefits such as Family & Children's Tax Credits. If employers paid a decent wage, these and other benefits would be unnecessary, just as much of the work done by charities in the UK would be.
The root cause is however that employers and governments are too mean and short-sighted to ensure a decent wage gets paid.
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
That's what we vote for Johnny.
'Eugene' came back and we had soup and toast (don't want to build more learned helplessness) and I challenged his suicidal ideation with a crash course in postmodernism. I'm learning, at 60, cuh. Fuh.
I insist that his f...... miserable life is his helpless story and that stories can be edited. It won't change a thing and it might change everything. He won't read, ramble, climb mountains, rebuild motorbikes. But I live in hope.
I told him he was 'that twat up there' Jesus, in disguise. I think he liked that.
I told him that he's always welcome but that I will always challenge him.
As that's what God wants me to do. While he's saving up paracetamol and aspirin for Easter. I implied I'd call the cops and have him sectioned if he didn't play nicely.
Which means he hasn't thought of hanging himself for Xmas. Which is what real men do ... and no I WON'T joke about that with him. He's so bloody innocent at 54 I can't see he's discovered porn even. Lived with his mother you see.
That's my charity for the day.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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